Ben Nelson made an official press release saying the following:
July 30, 2010 – Today, Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson issued this statement on the president’s nomination of Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat of retired Justice John Paul Stevens:
“As a member of the bipartisan ‘Gang of 14,’ I will follow our agreement that judicial nominees should be filibustered only under extraordinary circumstances. If a cloture vote is held on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, I am prepared to vote for cloture and oppose a filibuster because, in my view, this nominee deserves an up or down vote in the Senate.
“However, I have heard concerns from Nebraskans regarding Ms. Kagan, and her lack of a judicial record makes it difficult for me to discount the concerns raised by Nebraskans, or to reach a level of comfort that these concerns are unfounded. Therefore, I will not vote to confirm Ms. Kagan’s nomination.”
Why can’t Ben Nelson do the whole “for cloture/against the bill” thing on anything but judicial nominees? Doesn’t his explanation for opposing Kagan sound a lot like Vilsack’s explanation for why he fired Shirley Sherrod? Essentially, if people say bad things about a Democrat you musn’t try to fight back. That’s too hard. You must stop supporting the Democrat and join in the Idiot Chorus.
What I suspect is that Nelson wants the support of anti-choice groups in his state that he’ll probably need to get reelected. Maybe he’ll get some credit for coming out early and cutting the knees out of any Republican who might have been considering voting for confirmation.
The only good thing I can say is that he also provided cover for Republicans who want to split the difference.
I don’t live in Nebraska, but I think moves like this one from Nelson wind up pleasing no one. Nelson didn’t fight as hard as could to oppose a pro-choice judge so the Lifers aren’t going to give him a good score. And the Democrats want to know why Nelson confirms George Bush’s judges but not Barack Obama’s.
